Sometimes, you wake up in the morning, check your RSS feeds, and you know you just hit the jackpot. From the AT&T archives comes a video and description of Blit, a UNIX graphical user interface from 1982, on a 800x1024 portrait display. It employs a three button mouse, right-click context menus, multiple windows, and lots, lots more. It was developed at Bell Labs, and is yet another case that illustrates how the technology industry doesn't work in a vacuum.

There were also other pre-Apple GUI players, other than Xerox. As I recall, there was significant excitement about GUIs in computer magazines, before 1983.

Most notable in regards to the BLIT is the Three Rivers Perq. The Perq first appeared (and was marketed) in 1979. Of course, its development began long before it was released. Here is a video about the Perq from 1982: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xOD4T442X6I

In light of the Perq, it is interesting that the later Blit was originally called the "Jerq."